HI everyone, just thought I'd post this for any other FMV fans that aren't aware. It's available from Strategy First for download and a boxed copy can be bought from http://www.darkstarstore.com. They also have a facebook group here: http://www.facebook.com/darkstartheinteractivemovie

Does anyone know what kind of DRM Strategy First use? I e-mailed them a few days ago but didn't get a response.

Edit: Added URLs

Dude!

This looks ridiculous and awesome! It's ridiculawesome!


The Darkstar Store wasn't available when I viewed it. There is this website; however, which has some groovy trailers.

http://darkstar.gs/

It looks so epic and so bad. Plus they have the whole original cast of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 on board. This could be great.

How can T.V's Frank be in it? Did Torgo The White return him from Second Banana Heaven?

Not sure about this but might be worth a look just to check out the mighty Peter Graves and the old SOL crew.

Sorry about bringing back an old thread but this game is incredible. I can't believe this was released two years ago because it feels like it's from 1997 (in a good way). I recently broke down and purchased it off of Strategy First because I felt content that it wouldn't be appearing on any other service anytime soon (now, knowing my luck, it'll be on GOG next week). It's a fantastic adventure game and the most impressive indie title I've ever played. How they pulled this off without big-time funding alludes me. Anyways, if you're a fan of Myst or The Journeyman Project (probably my favourite adventure), you owe it to yourself to give it a look. I can confirm that it's entirely DRM-free. I backed it up onto two DVD-DL discs without any trouble. I did so because I'm afraid of losing my investment, you don't get infinite re-downloads like on GOG and it's a huge download. I can't just store it on a jump drive.

Anyways, this game has awesome graphics and a good methodical pacing that goes great with a cup of tea next to your keyboard. And it's huge, I've never seen an FMV first person adventure with this kind of scope before. Are there any fans of Darkstar on the forums here?

I don't get how these people can get funding to make an adventure game like this but Tim Schafer can only do it through a kickstarter campaign.

I'm not saying this game is bad, never tried it and this is the first I've heard of it. However, it looks like a lot of effort and money went into it, and someone was willing to front that money in 2010!!

Jay-sis, how big is this game? 12 GB?

Development for this game started 10 years before it's release and I don't think it saw much in the way of funding from any publisher. I'm fairly certain it was all from the designers' pockets. 14 GB actually.

I found the big box version quite interesting til I saw that you don't actually get any books.. it's all downloads.

Yeah, I thought that was disappointing too. And that Deluxe Edition looked sweet but it's only available on Amazon.co.uk. I'd really like to see a printed guide made available sometime, but the coffee table book is an interesting read. There's also a documentary here on YouTube but I haven't looked at it yet. I want to wait unti after I've played it all.

I am very wary of this title. It has been more or less universally panned by the critics, the metascore so far is 35.

According to Games, the problem is that it is not really a game, but series of clips. Which is why its called "interactive movie" - but as a movie it is just not very good at all. Compared with the live action games from the nineties, at least there where some game elements in them.

Games also said that when there is something to do, the live action elements are interrupting the play, taking an example of a logical puzzle were the player gets constantly interrupted and taken out of the puzzle by showing a clip of the worrying face of the captain.

To me this did not sound well...

It's very similar to old FMV games for better or for worse, personally I enjoyed it but the game biggest flaws were in my opinion :

There is only one cursor for movement and action, so often you don't know if clicking will result on you moving or you doing something, very annoying when you are manipulating a control panel and you zoom out instead of clicking on a button that was three pixel away.

Another issue is that the game was originally 40-60 GB, to fit it on only 14 they had to compress it, compress it very badly, so in the end not only the game style looks like it's from the 90s but sadly the video quality also looks like it's from the same time period.

But for me it's biggest flaw was the monstrosity, the infamy, the degenerated bastard from hell known as .... QUICKTIME

Maybe the games works well on Mac but on PC it's a pain, first you have to find a version of QT that works fine on you PC, sometime it's the version that came with the game, sometime it's the latest one, sometime it's some random version floating on the Net, but even once the game starts it's very unstable and with some graphical glitches.

It's quicktime? It's a definate no-no for me then.. I wouldn't even watch the avengers trailer that was posted here a few days back.. I won't install it.

Honestly, I'm not surprised. I don't think any modern gaming publications could give this game a fair shake up. The acting ranges from fair to awful and the gameplay is a lot easier than the FMV adventures it seems to imitate.

I really do hate the cursor. The controls and interface could use a little polish. But at least it makes pixel hunting much more difficult, leaving you to truly explore and examine your surroundings.

Yeah, Quicktime sucks. I hate the fact that this title requires it. I prefer Quicktime stays the hell away from my system, but what can you do. It's also obvious that Apple's Quicktime enviroment isn't entirely stable on PCs. I haven't seen a game require Quicktime for a long while, and for good reason.

So brendano, I'm intrigued. With so many apparently game breaking flaws you still seem to think its "an incredible game"

Do you think it's just a matter of personal taste or do you really think there is some quality and universal appeal under all these issues?

I think it's an incredible throw back. And I think it deserves to be played the same way Duke Nukem Forever did after so many years of development hell. I have no doubt that many of these flaws are game breakers for modern gamers, but I've been playing old pc games for so long that I'm very comfortable with them.

I don't think it's an "incredible game" so much as I think that it's incredible that this thing exists. And for the genre it belongs to (FMV, first person adventure) it's actually in so many ways a prime example of how these games can be great. Maybe with the current state of adventure games I was simply starved for something new and I can't look at it as objectively as the next gamer. But I've had a lot of fun with it and I wanted to share it.

Personal taste will play a factor in it. Do you like adventure games? I've played and replayed adventure games so many times that I was simply glad to explore a new enviroment and be confronted with puzzles I haven't solved before and be shown a new story I don't know the ending to. I don't know what could kill me around the next corner, it's exhilarating.